Saturday, April 26, 2008

The homepage for Monsterpocalypse has recently been given an upgrade from a mere “teaser” site to something considerably more substantial. Privateer Press is clearly choosing to gradually reveal the details and particulars of the game while it leads up to its actual commercial release, but in the meantime there’s still some decent amount of stuff to peruse, including some photos of the game itself, a “faction” preview and some downloadable avatars.

Friday, April 18, 2008

The end of April sees the release of the SNK Arcade Classics game for Wii and PSP owners, along with those of us still stubbornly clinging to our PS2 machines. It’s a collection of old school arcade titles, but of particular interest in the lineup is the fighting game King of the Monsters. I never actually got the opportunity to play it during its original run in dingy arcades or when it was later ported to the Sega Genesis system, so I’m not opposed to parting with fifteen bucks for the opportunity to finally indulge my curiosity. Besides, if it turns out to be a forgettable dud in the gameplay department, there’s at least a bunch of other titles on the disc to help offset any feelings of money ill-spent.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The folks behind the upcoming collectible miniatures game Monsterpocalypse have started up a development blog that will not only cover previews and news updates concerning said game, but apparently general musings about the giant monster genre as a whole. Although there isn't a huge amount of content up at the moment (seeing as the site’s not even a week old as of this posting), some cool little tidbits can be found from rummaging about- including a kick-ass piece of promotional artwork (a portion of which I used as the visual header for this very entry) suitable for use as desktop wallpaper.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Blog reader “JP” brought this website to my attention which has collected and posted the entire collection of a trading card series called Dinosaurs Attack! The cards were released in 1988 as a sort of follow-up to the infamous Mars Attacks! trading cards from the 60’s and shares in its predecessor’s portrayals of over-the-top violence and gore. Normally, I consider dinosaurs to be outside of the realm of giant monsters since they’re not technically “monsters”, but just really big, extinct animals- however, the content and paleontological inaccuracy of the creatures depicted in the series is much more akin to a rampaging daikaiju movie than something you’d ever come across on the Discovery Channel. How so, might you ask?

First off, the dinosaurs in quite a few of the cards are insanely over-sized:

Or appear to be made up by the artist (a.k.a. a “generi-saurus”):

Allof the various species are blood-thirsty carnivores, even the plant-eating ones:

I like this one- clearly a reference to the creatures of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth:

I’ve watched a lot of documentaries, but none of them ever mentioned how dinosaurs were guided by the will of a satanic, reptilian deity called the “Supreme Monstrosity”. Who knew?

Apparently the card series was considered for a theatrical adaptation, but it fell out of interest when JurassicPark went into production.

Wait a minute- so I was denied a film wherein building-sized dinosaurs go berserk in modern day thanks to a scheme perpetrated by a prehistoric equivalent of Skeletor? Curse you, Spielberg!